Nanfu Wang’s In the Same Breath continues the filmmaker’s probing inquiries into Chinese society, this time exploring the ways the government refused to cooperate with the rest of the world at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wang’s primary focus is on China’s propaganda efforts at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and she traces how, while lockdown efforts may have done a better job of containing the virus than here in the US, the state propaganda machine exacerbated the crisis and led to things being much worse for the entire world. She also draws an uncomfortable line between propaganda in China and that misinformation that runs rampant here in the US, showing that Americans don’t have the moral high ground either. There are so many candid and powerful interviews from inside Wuhan, so many striking images and heartbreaking moments that we just haven’t seen much of yet from the COVID-19 crisis. The film’s ending sneaks up you, presenting a vision of how many lives could have been saved in the past year if there had been better transparency and cooperation between China and the US (especially if we hadn’t had a US president at the time so devoted to disinformation and propaganda designed to make himself look better). It’s an incredible work from one of our great documentary filmmakers, wrestling with important questions.